Nakande to open Convergence forum

The Minister of State for Communications, Alhaji Ibrahim Dasuki Nakande, would Friday this week, declared open the second IT Edge-organised West Africa Convergence Forum in Lagos.

The organizers said that participants would cut across the oil and gas, banking, legal, telecom and entertainment sector.

According to them, the high profile event has more than 30 speakers lined up, including Nigeria’s chief telecom regulator Dr. Ernest Ndukwe as confirmed lead discussant in the five sessions IT Edge Convergence Forum.

Also, they said, discussions are expected to articulate the way forward on the future of the industry in sub-Sahara’s biggest telecom market with a combined active telecom subscription in excess of 78 million, as Nigeria leads the West Africa sub-region with over 56 million telephone subscribers.

Part of topics to be centred on include the rights infringement of intellectual property by content providers; and the provision of robust infrastructure to accelerate the growth of convergence.

The event with the theme “Infrastructural Challenges in the Converging environment” they said, would also have the United Nations on consultant on Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D), Ghanaian Prof. Clement Dzidonu who would be joining chief executive officers, namely the Ibadan-based ISP Skannet, Mr. Sunday Folayan on the opening session tagged: West Africa: The Convergence-Environment and Policy Implications. Dzidonu would be examining the ‘Implications of Convergence within the ICT4D space.’ He is to be joined in discussions by Folayan and Chris Uwaje, two leading private sector players pushing conduit services and content.

The Infrastructure session, they said, is to feature some of the industry’s chief executive officers and chief technical features of backbone providers including Dr. Kwame Boakye, CEO of Backbone Connectivity Network, Ola Popoola of Phase 3 Telecom, Gerald Ilukwe of Galaxy Backbone. They would be joined by Professor Boroffice Ajayi, director general of Nigeria Agency for Space Research and Development (NARSDA) among others.


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